


The Future Could Be Bright

by jane_x80



Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas, Gen, Kid Fic, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28082094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_x80/pseuds/jane_x80
Summary: Jimmy Palmer is working way too hard, now that he is the Medical Examiner and unlike Ducky, he doesn't have an assistant to help with the workload, straining his relationship with Breena and making him feel as if he is missing out on Victoria's entire childhood. He's called to consult on a case in Marseille so close to the holidays and knows that this will be yet another strain on his personal life. But a phone call from an old friend changes things and helps him embrace what he needs to do to make things better in his own life.
Relationships: Anthony DiNozzo & Jimmy Palmer, Jimmy Palmer/Breena Slater
Comments: 22
Kudos: 117
Collections: 2020 NCIS Secret Santa Gift Exchange





	The Future Could Be Bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sexycazzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexycazzy/gifts).



> In this story, Ziva remains firmly dead and she’s not secretly alive somewhere, so I’ve marked it canon divergent.
> 
> Merry Christmas to sexycazzy! I hope you enjoy this story.
> 
> -Santa

Doctor Jimmy Palmer was puttering about in Autopsy, tidying up his equipment and marveling at the direction in which his life had gone. He owed Doctor Ducky Mallard _so_ much, and he missed him terribly now that his daughter’s Grand-Ducky was mostly retired. Yes, of course Ducky was now the Historian and Jimmy still saw him on a semi-regular basis. Ducky hadn’t gone away forever. But he was no longer the Medical Examiner for NCIS. Jimmy was. Which was a twist that Jimmy had never really anticipated.

Autopsy had been Ducky’s domain for a couple of decades, since years before Jimmy was even hired to be his assistant. There had been Gerald, before Jimmy, and the poor man had been badly injured by that guy Ari, and Jimmy had only supposed to be a temporary replacement for Gerald. But when it turned out that Gerald’s injuries were too great, and his mental health affected by being taken hostage by that terrorist and he couldn’t return, they had made Jimmy a permanent employee. And eventually, over a decade and a half later, Ducky had named Jimmy his successor, which meant that Jimmy was now NCIS’s Medical Examiner.

It had been a lot of pressure for Jimmy when he took on this role. Not just because now he was overworked and understaffed, but because Ducky had always made everything feel manageable and doable, even when Jimmy had all the doubt in the world that what they had been tasked to do would even be possible. Take for instance how Ducky had talked him into going to medical school, even when he felt like he didn’t have the mental capacity or the smarts for it. He had never been the brightest bulb in the box, if you knew what he meant. Oh, he was clever enough to have graduated high school and gotten a bachelor’s degree, but the thought of all the hurdles one had to overcome to even be _accepted_ to medical school had stopped him from aspiring for more. But Ducky had refused to let him wallow in self-pity or self-doubt and think the worst about himself. Ducky had that ability to make things feel possible, achievable, and made him feel as if he could accomplish more than he had ever thought possible for himself. And as it turned out, Ducky had been right.

Jimmy was a medical doctor now. He had passed everything despite the fact that he had needed to take the exams three times before he passed, and he was now a real medical examiner with a bona fide piece of paper to prove it, instead of just Ducky’s temporary and then permanent assistant. Not that it hadn’t been the honor of a lifetime to have held the position of Ducky’s assistant. It had defined Jimmy, made him into the man that he had become. Ducky had helped to mold him into the man that he was now.

He felt himself puff up his chest whenever Ducky addressed him as Doctor Palmer instead of Mister Palmer as had been his practice for years. It was Ducky’s faith in him that had got him through med school. And before Ducky went off to enjoy his retirement, write his books, be the historian, and do all the talks that he had planned to do after leaving NCIS, he had sat Jimmy down and taken the time to assure him that he was ready to take on the mantle of NCIS’s ME. That he had, in fact, been doing the job for over a decade and a half. He was not to think that he was inexperienced in any of their procedures. Ducky had trained him not only in all the work that needed to be done for those that ended up on their slabs, but also all the paperwork and administrative work that was necessary to ensure that Autopsy ran smoothly. Jimmy had even been doing most of it for the past few years, Ducky admitted, since he had been slowly letting go and gradually letting Jimmy take the wheel.

Ducky had told him how he had every confidence that Jimmy would not only thrive as the ME, but that he was _proud_ of him.

“As you know, I do not have children of my own,” Ducky had said that day. “But you have been like a son to me for all these years. Better even than a son, since children grow up and leave the nest. Leave their parents. Instead, you have come into my nest, made it into a home, become a son to me, and now you have allowed me the freedom to leave this nest and pursue other objectives without worrying about anything. I have faith in you, Doctor Palmer. I always have.”

Jimmy had been so shocked by Ducky’s words all he could do was sit there and make unintelligible noises – so, basically the usual thing for him. He still tended to babble and stammer when he was nervous or excited. Granted, it did take more to get him going now that he was older and relatively calmer, but Ducky still had the wherewithal to reduce Jimmy back to the stammering, babbling young man that he had once been.

“You are ready, Doctor Palmer,” Ducky had reassured him. “I trust you and your skills. You make me proud every single day.”

Jimmy wasn’t ashamed to say that he had burst into tears at that. And who could blame him? His own father had not played a very big part in his life, and he had been a bad man. He’d died when Jimmy was ten. He had had no father figure, and although his mother was a wonderful woman and a wonderful mother, he hadn’t really had that male parental figure to emulate growing up. It wasn’t until he got the job at NCIS that he was finally exposed to male authority figures that he could look up to and learn from and think of as surrogate fathers. Even though he was a lowly ME’s Assistant, Doctor Mallard, Special Agent Gibbs and even Director Vance had eventually become a strange, diverse, and divergent set of paternal role models for him. He was closest, of course, to Ducky, and Vance had always been kind to him, despite the fact that he was the director of the entire agency, and Gibbs had been the most confusing one of the three, one moment frightening him until he was babbling incoherently – sadly, a literal description rather than a metaphorical one – and the next giving him gruff support. Abby called it tough love, but it was honestly just confusing. Jimmy would have preferred it if Gibbs was never nice to him. He agreed with his old friend Tony on that matter. It was weird when Gibbs was nice, and it made him suspicious. But he did learn a lot from Gibbs, in his own way.

The point being that Ducky, though, had truly become like a father to him and Ducky’s approval, his confidence and his faith in Jimmy to take over as Ducky’s successor had been everything to Jimmy. He might have meandered along the way and struggled mightily to actually get to this point, but he wouldn’t have been able to even dream about it without Ducky’s gentle hand guiding him.

But hell, Jimmy was exhausted all the time now. Ducky had had an assistant – Jimmy himself – to run around and help with the workload. And even if Jimmy had been the one doing the heavy lifting in the past couple of years, both physically as well as metaphorically, Ducky had been there doing a lot of the work. Now, Jimmy was left to do the job that had taken two full time workers a ton of overtime to complete by himself, and he was worn out. Ducky had had an assistant for a reason. But every time Jimmy tried to speak to Vance about it, something always came up or Vance was obviously not in the right frame of mind to be receptive to a request for an assistant, or Jimmy had chickened out of making the request a couple of times already. It was driving Breena up the wall that Jimmy hadn’t even been able to present his case to Vance. If Jimmy didn’t get his act together, it was likely that Breena would make an appointment with Vance and make the case for him.

Being a father, a husband, and a family man was really difficult when one worked eighty to a hundred hours a week, after all. He was missing Victoria’s childhood, and he really needed to make a change or he would lose Breena and Victoria just by never being there for them. He didn’t want to be the kind of absentee father that he saw so many people being. He wanted to be a real parent, someone involved in his daughter’s life. He wanted to be the best father he could be, given his own experiences having a terrible father. He wanted things to be different for Victoria. But right now, Victoria thought of him as that stranger who seemed to turn up at odd hours. On a normal day, Jimmy left the house before Victoria or Breena were awake, and he came home long after they were asleep. It was no way to raise a child and he knew it. He didn’t want to one day come to the realization that he’d missed Victoria’s entire childhood and that she was off to college thinking of him only as a kind, well-meaning yet distant father. He wanted to be there to take her to ballet and karate, and little league and swimming, whatever her interests might be. He wanted to be there for her in the way that his own father had never been there for him.

But the truth was, right now, he wasn’t there for her. He wasn’t being a good father. He wasn’t present. He hadn’t been able to make it to any of her ballet recitals, never mind taking her to her classes. He hadn’t made it to any of her kindergarten Parent-Teacher meetings. He hadn’t been able to spend time with her, truly spend time with her, at all ever since he became the ME.

And now, Vance had asked him to go to the Marseille office because a case had cropped up there that had an eerie similarity to one of the cases Jimmy had worked on before Ducky retired. Jimmy couldn’t even keep up with the work that he already had here in DC, never mind traveling to another continent to consult on a case. But Vance had come down to Autopsy to tell him about this, which meant that it was a high priority.

Jimmy wasn’t looking forward to telling Breena that having spent the past year working so much that he was barely ever home that he was only ever having dinner with his wife and daughter once every couple of weeks or so, he was now going to have to go away for a few days on these few days leading up to Christmas. Jimmy was so going to be sleeping on the couch for a _long_ , long time. He was so bummed about leaving his family during this holiday season that he couldn’t even get excited for his very first trip out of the country. And this would be a trip to France. Where he wanted so much to take Breena, as Paris was one of the destinations that was on her bucket list. And here he was going to France without Breena, and even though it wasn’t going to be Paris, it was still going to be another thing for her to be upset about, and rightly so.

Jimmy sighed and heaved himself up onto one of the metal tables that he used to operate on his ‘guests’ in Autopsy. What the hell was he going to tell Breena? How was he going to break this news to Victoria? Plus, he knew how these cases could go. Chances were high that it would become more complicated and the resolution of it take a lot longer than anticipated, and then there Jimmy would be, stuck in France over Christmas, maybe over New Year, _without_ his wife and his daughter, the two most important people in the world to him. It was going to be a disaster.

Jimmy sat there for a while, wondering how bad it would be if he just called Breena to let her know what Vance had just asked him to do instead of talking to her about it face to face.

No. Better not take the coward’s way out or he would be even more in the doghouse. He pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his scrubs, just to look at it, not to call Breena and tell her over the phone what was happening or anything like that, but just holding the phone made him feel calmer about things and was helping him to organize his thoughts and hopefully find the words to talk to Breena about this when he got home. Which meant that he really needed to leave NCIS before another case dropped and get home before Breena was asleep so he could talk to her about this.

He sighed, his head in his hands, sitting for just a moment, holding his phone, when it rang and surprised him. He looked down and saw that it was an unknown number. He swiped to answer the call.

“Hello?” he said tentatively.

“Jimmy Palmer, as I live and breathe!” came a familiar voice.

“Tony?” Jimmy had to ask, since it had been a little while since he’d heard from Tony. He’d scarpered off to Paris, taking little Tali with him after Ziva died and he had been informed of her existence and immediately handed a toddler daughter that had somehow survived the bombing of the farmhouse that had killed Ziva. Tony called every once in a while, but he tended to keep their calls short and mostly talked to Jimmy about Breena and Victoria and Tali, not really sharing too much of what he himself was up to. Jimmy had told Tony about how overworked he was now that Ducky had retired from the position of ME, though, and managed to talk to him about his woes, so Tony knew the situation he was in.

“The one and only!” Tony’s voice was filled with warmth and fondness. “How’s my Autopsy Gremlin doing? Still working like a crazy man, Jimmy?”

“You don’t even know the half of it, Tony,” Jimmy sighed, rubbing his forehead tiredly. “You doing OK? How’s Tali?”

“I’m good. We’re all good,” Jimmy could hear the smile in Tony’s voice. “How’s Breena and Victoria?”

“OK, as far as I know,” Jimmy complained. “It’s not as if I get to see them very much.”

“Are you _still_ down in Autopsy, Jimbo?”

“Three guesses…”

“Man, get your coat on and go home to your beautiful wife and cutie pie daughter!” Tony urged him. “I’m staying on the line with you, but you need to get your ass home, right now.”

“I was on my way…” Jimmy muttered, but he obeyed Tony, going to pick up his jacket and shrug it on over his scrubs. Just this one time he was just going to go home and shower at home instead of showering and changing at work.

“Good, good,” Tony said approvingly as Jimmy narrated what he was doing.

“Hey, isn’t it like the middle of the night for you?” Jimmy finally realized that it had to be in the wee hours of the morn in Paris.

“It kind of is,” Tony agreed. “That’s kind of why I’m calling.”

“Are you OK? Is Tali OK?”

“We’re fine, we’re good,” Tony assured him. “But you know the case that Vance asked you to come and consult on in Marseille?”

“Ummm… how would you know about that?” Jimmy frowned as he took the stairs up to exit the building.

“Well… I’m the one who requested that you come here to help me with it?” Jimmy could picture the guilty yet optimistic look that he knew was on Tony’s face.

“What do you mean, help you with it?”

“Yeah, funny story,” Tony sighed into the phone. “I’ve been head of the Marseille field office for like a year now?”

“What?” Jimmy spluttered.

“Yeah, I know. I took the job but made Vance promise not to disclose that this was what I was doing,” Tony sounded sad. “I just didn’t want to get sucked back into the weird drama that goes on in DC. It’s pretty quiet here in Marseille, and I don’t have to work Gibbs’ maniacal hours, and I get to be a dad to Tali. It’s like I get to have everything, you know? I just know that if Gibbs or Abby knew that I was back at NCIS, that my life would change and I would be totally on call and on the hook to pick up all the slack and do all kinds of work that you wouldn’t think would be my job anymore since I’m not on the team, but you know how that goes…”

“Yeah, I do,” Jimmy had to agree.

“So, yeah, I’m back at NCIS but I’m keeping a low profile.”

“That’s why you took Marseille and not Rota, because I know Rota had an opening at the same time.”

“Yup.”

Rota was larger and had a naval base attached to it. There was no way Vance wouldn’t have offered Tony Rota first if he was on the job market. But Marseille was quiet, and had only a small staff, which Jimmy had learned after Tony’s little adventure trying to pick up Admiral Kendall’s wayward daughter. That had also been the case where Tony had had to use Symbolese to communicate with Jimmy, messages which he then conveyed to Gibbs and Vance. At the end of that case, Breena had sent him the message that Tony had had to decode for him, telling him that she was pregnant with Victoria. It had been an amazing revelation, especially after the adoption fell through. And Tony had been there for that, which made it even more special. It made him feel good to think about Marseille, it made him think of them learning about Victoria’s existence. Although Marseille might bring about a totally different set of memories for Tony, probably not all of them good. Which reminded Jimmy…

“Hey, I thought you had to promise never to go back to Marseille after that case with the Admiral’s daughter?” he had to ask.

Tony laughed, his laughter sounding light and carefree. “Yeah, I apologized, told the cops the truth, and Vance smoothed it over for me to be here,” Jimmy could tell he was shaking his head and rolling his eyes. “It’s kind of weird to be back in the office where everyone died that day that I tried to bring them pastries for breakfast.”

“I bet,” Jimmy nodded.

“Anyway, look, I was thinking, since I need your help for this case, and Tali hasn’t had a playdate with Victoria, other than on video calls, in like…”

“ _Ever_ ,” Jimmy interjected.

“Yeah, ever,” Tony chuckled softly. “Have you told Breena that you’re coming to Marseille for a few days?”

“Not yet,” Jimmy said glumly.

“Hey, hey, none of that,” Tony said sternly. “Turn that frown upside down.”

Jimmy had to snort at that Abby-ism. He sighed, suddenly missing Abby about as much as he missed Tony. It had been sad for him when she left. Unlike the field agents, he and Ducky had hung out with Abby a lot more during the course of their years together. Autopsy was only one floor below Forensics and the NCIS basement denizens had been good friends with each other, and besides, Jimmy had been the one running up and down between the two floors delivering things from Ducky to Abby for her to do her lab magic on it. Kasie was great and sweet and he liked working with her, don’t get him wrong, but he still missed having his old friend running around the lab in her goth clothes and her combat boots, her happy demeanor making you feel welcome at all times. He had a lot of history with Abby, after years of working together. And since Tony, Ducky and Abby were no longer a major part of his life, he felt as if a lot had changed in such a short time after the stability that he’d enjoyed working as Ducky’s assistant for all those years.

“So anyway, as I was saying,” Tony continued, “I know that you’ve been overworked and you haven’t been able to spend as much time as you want with Breena and Victoria, and I thought maybe you should just all come to France, we’ll work on this case and you and your family should spend Christmas with me and Tali? We can have a nice break. Didn’t you tell me Breena has Paris on her bucket list? We could do Paris on the weekends and whatnot.”

“Tony,” Jimmy rolled his eyes. “As much as I would love to bring Breena and Victoria, it’s not like I can afford it. I still have all my med school loans to pay off, and even though I got a promotion and a raise, I’m still working for the government and we’re not known for getting the big bucks, as you well know.”

Tony laughed again. “Yeah, but you know that I can afford it.”

“I can’t let you do that,” Jimmy was walking through the parking lot to get to his car by then. Yeah, he knew that Tony had a lot of family money that he never talked about, and as far as Jimmy knew, he never used. It was something he never liked to talk about since it involved his long-dead mother, still a sad and sore spot for Tony.

“Their passports are up to date still, right? You said they took that trip to Canada to see Breena’s aunt a few months ago?”

“Yeah.” A trip that Jimmy had had to cancel on and let Breena and Victoria go without him since an urgent case had come up and his leave had been retracted.

“OK, well, Vance already had his assistant book your ticket on NCIS’ dime, and…” there was a moment where Tony seemed distracted before he came back on, “…now I’ve booked Breena and Victoria on the same flight. And it’s an open-ended ticket so you can go back to DC whenever. I recommend staying through the New Year, though, take some well-deserved time off.”

“I can’t afford to stay in France for so long!”

“You’re staying with us! Hey, what are friends for if you can’t couch surf at their house every so often,” Jimmy could picture the mischievous grin on Tony’s face as he said that.

“I can’t accept this, Tony,” Jimmy had to try again. “It’s too much.”

“No it’s not.”

“Tony! You can’t do this!”

“I can and I already did,” Tony crowed. “Please, Jimmy. I need your help on this case, and I know that this wouldn’t have gone over well with Breena. You deserve a break, Breena should get her trip to France, and Victoria should come over and play with Tali! Tali is so gonna love this, too. She gets sad that it’s always just the two of us for the holidays.”

Jimmy whined.

“Besides, this is an expense my mom would have approved of,” Tony said softly. “Making my family happy for the holidays? She would have loved that.”

Jimmy had to agree after that. Which was how he ended up at Tony’s apartment with Breena and Victoria after one long, transatlantic airplane ride. Breena had been more than up for the last minute adventure and was excited to skip Christmas with her parents and instead spend it in France with Jimmy, Victoria, and Tony and Tali.

The case had taken about a week to solve, and they were able to wrap up the investigation a couple days before Christmas. While they worked, Tali and her au pair, Madeline, were tasked with taking Breena and Victoria to see the sights, and every evening when Tony and Jimmy came home, they were regaled with tales of their adventures. Breena and Victoria were having the time of their lives, and even though the case was serious and obviously Tony worked hard, he made every effort to allow his team to leave work at a reasonable hour, especially given that the holidays were so soon. And once the case was closed and Tony and his team had completed their paperwork, Tony had arranged to take time off through the New Year, and somehow had wrangled Vance into letting Jimmy do the same.

When Tony wanted something, he was a force to reckon with and Vance was no match for him. Unlike Gibbs, Tony had a much lighter touch and Vance didn’t leave feeling angry and upset at being steamrolled. Tony somehow managed to make it so that Vance ended up thinking that this vacation was his own idea instead of Tony’s, and neither Jimmy nor Tony were going to dispute that.

The au pair lived in one of the rooms of Tony’s apartment, Jimmy and Breena occupied the guest room, and Victoria shared Tali’s room with her while Tony slept alone. Tony’s bed wasn’t a twin in this apartment, Jimmy was quick to note. Madeline was a lovely girl and Breena had privately wondered if Tony was boinking the au pair, so Jimmy asked him about it when they were at work.

Tony had made a face at that.

“College co-eds are way too young for me now, AG,” he grinned. “Besides, I’m father to a young daughter and I need to model the behavior that she can use as a yardstick for how people treat her when she gets older. Frat Boy Tony is not someone I want her to be familiar with.”

“You haven’t even been Frat Boy Tony for years, Tony,” Jimmy assured him. “Probably not as long as I’ve known you.”

“Yeah?” Tony raised his eyebrows at Jimmy. 

“You weren’t really as bad as you made yourself out to be,” Jimmy rolled his eyes. “If you were as much of a womanizer as Ziva thought you were, when would you have time to work as much as you did? I know how many hours you used to put in a week, Tony.”

“Right?” Tony shook his head. “She just always saw me a certain way, I guess.”

There was a moment of sadness, thinking about Ziva, dead a few years now. And then Tony sighed. “I’m kind of seeing someone right now,” he confessed.

“Oh yeah?” It was Jimmy’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “Who’s the lucky lady? And is she some French bombshell?”

Tony’s face colored and he cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “French bombshell, sure,” he nodded. “Lucky? I suppose we could debate that. Lady, most definitely not.”

“Huh?” It took Jimmy a moment to process what Tony was saying. “Are you seeing a guy, Tony?” His eyes were wide and hopeful. Was Tony finally moving on from Ziva or whatever funk he might have been in, probably since after the La Grenouille incident. It had been a long time since he had seen that light in Tony’s eyes that he used to see during the dark days while Gibbs was in Mexico and the MCRT beating Tony down with their behavioral issues, and the fact that he was so into his then-secret girlfriend had been the only thing that made him happy, it seemed to Jimmy.

“Would that be a problem?”

“Why would it be a problem?” Jimmy frowned, confused. “Is he not a nice guy? Because if he isn’t, then you can do better. Plenty of fish in the sea.”

Tony stared at him for a long moment before he broke into a smile. “No, he’s a great guy,” he blushed again. “I just wondered if it was the ‘guy’ thing that might be a problem.”

Jimmy realized then that Tony had just come out to him and he couldn’t help but smile back. “As long as they treat you right, Tony, I don’t care what gender they are.”

Tony’s smile was warm and grateful. “I haven’t introduced him to Tali yet, though,” he shrugged. “I don’t want to disrupt her life with any kind of romantic relationship that I might have, until I know it’s something serious. Then, Tali can meet him.”

“That’s wise,” Jimmy nodded. “If I were in your shoes, I’d do the same thing. What does he do?”

“He’s in the _Police nationale_ ,” Tony said softly.

“A cop,” Jimmy couldn’t help but approve. If anyone could understand a cop’s workload and commitment to the work, it would be another cop. “Well, when you’re ready, you should let me and Breena meet him and vet him for you.”

“Thanks, Jimmy,” Tony squeezed his shoulder. “You’ve always been so good to me.”

“Right back atcha,” Jimmy winked at him.

And that was it. He told Breena about it, of course, and she squealed in delight, hoping that for once Tony would find happiness and love. It seemed to Jimmy that Tony had been searching forever and it always fell through for him.

But in any case, once the case was over and Tony had all that time off, they ended up driving around the country together. Madeline had gone home to her family for Christmas, so Jimmy got to see what an amazing father Tony was to his daughter. He’d had a trial by fire, being given custody of a daughter that he hadn’t even known existed after Ziva’s death, but it seemed to him that Tony had risen to the occasion, like he always did, and he was doing an amazing job. It fascinated him how Tony and Tali switched between speaking French and English, and when they spoke English, Tali’s accent was as American as all get out, no trace of Ziva’s or Madeline’s accent. Tali and Victoria got on like a house on fire, too, and only a few days spent in Tali’s and Madeline’s company was causing her to intersperse French words into her sentences.

Kids were amazing sponges, Jimmy thought. He envied Tony how much time he seemed to be able to spend with Tali. But there wasn’t a lot of time to brood, they were busy sight seeing and experiencing Christmas in France. They went to the local Christmas markets and bought all kinds of keepsakes, including a few of those exquisite little figurines made by local craftsmen to bring home to DC. Tony had a tree and presents were appearing under it, wrapped in gaily patterned wrapping paper. Victoria and Tali walked everywhere hand in hand, and it warmed Jimmy’s heart to see that friendship blooming between the two little girls.

On Christmas Eve, they left a glass of milk and a plate of cookies for Santa Claus, as well as one each of Victoria’s and Tali’s shoes stuffed with carrots, celery, and cut up pieces of apples in little Ziploc bags for Père Noël’s donkey, Gui, as was the tradition of French children, because Victoria and Tali wanted to cover their bases and ensure that neither Santa nor Père Noël would feel left out. Neither of the girls wanted the gift bringers to feel bad and leave them fewer presents than they should.

In what Tony claimed was an Italian tradition that he learned from the Italian American cook that worked for his mother when he was a child, he cooked a big feast of a variety of seafood dishes, calling it the Feast of the Seven Fishes with Victoria and Tali as his kitchen helpers. Breena supervised the girls rolling out cookie dough that Tony made and left chilling in the refrigerator, and they used different Christmas themed cookie cutters to cut out cookies in the shape of snowmen, gingerbread men, Christmas trees and various Christmas ornaments. The kitchen got incredibly messy when the girls began decorating the cookies with colored frosting that they squeezed out of tubes.

Then they sat down and ate together, a delicious Christmas Eve meal that was filled with love and laughter. Jimmy couldn’t stop staring at his wife, the color high in her cheeks as she drank the good wine Tony had on hand and laughed at the girls’ and Tony’s antics as they ate. Jimmy was a lucky, lucky man. She was a goddess for putting up with all of his foibles and eccentricities and the working too much thing, and just how he was in general. He couldn’t believe how happy he was to be here without having to worry about work, sitting and eating with his wife and daughter, in France of all places. He wasn’t being looked down upon by his overly judgmental father-in-law, but instead, he was sitting with one of his best friends and his daughter and he was filled with joy. After dinner, Tony played the piano and they all sang Christmas carols, including blundering through a few in French, until it was time for bed. 

Christmas morning, the girls woke Jimmy and Breena up early and then they went running into Tony’s room to wake him up, and it was a rowdy morning filled with more laughter and love. They saw that the cookies and milk had been eaten, and so had the healthy snacks for Gui. There were funny gag gifts as well as real presents for everyone under the tree. Tony had gotten expensive Christian Louboutin high heeled pumps for Breena that Jimmy knew cost a pretty penny, and for him Tony had gotten Salvatore Ferragamo dress shoes. Jimmy found himself gazing dreamily at both pairs of shoes and he couldn’t help the surge of arousal when he saw Breena try on the four inch heels and parade around the apartment.

Tony saw the look on his face and gave him a sly wink and a nudge, and Jimmy blushed. Tony had known exactly what he was doing when he got them expensive shoes. He remembered so many little things about people, Jimmy didn’t know quite how he did it. 

Once the kids were busy playing with their new toys, and Breena went to take a nap, Tony and Jimmy sat, drinking coffee and watching the girls work together to lay train tracks all over the living room and making their toy trains go around and around.

“Thanks for doing this for us, Tony,” Jimmy blew out a long breath. “You made us all so happy with this trip.”

Tony’s smile was bashful. “I was happy to have the company, too. I’ve missed our conversations.”

“Me, too.”

They watched as the girls tried crashing their trains together for a change.

“That girl sure makes it known that she’s still Ziva’s daughter,” Tony sighed, smiling sadly.

“Well, Victoria was egging her on.”

“You’re not going to blame Breena for that, are you?”

They both laughed.

“It’s really great to see them get along so well,” Tony looked pensive. “I hated being an only child, you know? I always wanted a sibling.”

“Me, too,” Jimmy agreed. “Breena and I have talked about trying for a baby brother or sister, or even going the adoption route again even though that hadn’t ended well for us the first time. I want Victoria to not grow up as lonely as I did.”

Tony nodded. “Yeah, I would think about that, too, if I weren’t already a single parent,” he grinned.

“Well, if things work out with this guy, maybe you guys can adopt together.”

Tony grinned. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, huh? Let me see if I want to date him long term. Figure out if he’s important enough to me that Tali should get to know him. Baby steps, before you marry us off and have us go and have more babies.”

Jimmy chuckled at that.

“So why _aren’t_ you and Breena getting busy making another baby?” Tony turned, looking curious but not in any way judgmental.

“I just haven’t been home enough to be with Breena or Victoria, Tony,” Jimmy sighed, rubbing his face tiredly. “I promised Breena that I would talk to Vance about fewer hours, or them hiring an assistant for me. I can’t do it all myself and still be able to have a healthy work-life balance. It’s not just affecting me now, but also Breena and Victoria. I want to be there to see her grow up, and not just only be the random guy who sometimes sleeps in the apartment with them.”

“Sounds like you have to talk to Vance.”

“I know I do. I just keep chickening out,” Jimmy rolled his eyes at his own cowardice. “I just don’t want to let him down, you know? He took a big chance, giving me the ME position.”

“What chance did he take?” Tony shook his head. “Ducky personally trained you, and you even have the degrees to back you up. What Ducky taught you you can’t learn in a classroom, so you’re already well ahead of any other candidates that Vance might have considered. You were the only one for the job, Jimbo.”

“Maybe,” Jimmy didn’t want to let self-doubt get to him, but sometimes it was hard not to think that way about himself. It was how he was used to thinking about himself, after all.

“No maybe about it,” Tony told him, his tone firm. “He’s lucky to have you and he knows it. It’s time you know it, too.”

Jimmy gave him a small smile, but the words warmed his heart.

“Besides, we can’t all work the kind of crazy hours that Gibbs does,” Tony’s voice was soft. “It’s no surprise that he’s still alone after all these years.”

Jimmy made a noise of agreement. There was no disputing that.

“I knew after I saw Tali, and saw that she was my daughter, that she deserved far better than the lifestyle that Gibbs dictated,” Tony continued. “I don’t know how McGee is managing to parent while working those terrible hours I used to work. I could barely even keep a goldfish alive, never mind be a father.”

Jimmy couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

“They’re much better about things here,” Tony shrugged. “We all have families, and although we don’t shirk our duties at work, there’s no reason to sleep there every night. It’s counter-productive and makes me grumpy and less sharp. You need your people well rested so they can see what’s going on and put things together quickly. Not sit around drinking as much coffee as they can so their eyes will stay open.”

“Yeah, you guys had some crazy work days.”

“Every day was a crazy work day,” Tony sipped his coffee. “I can’t do that to my team here, and I won’t be that kind of father to Tali. She deserves a real dad. Not someone who barely ever comes home. I left Gibbs because I knew I couldn’t be a good father to Tali in DC. That life is too hard on someone who’s single and impossible for a single father.”

“It’s kind of my life right now,” Jimmy made a face.

“Only if you let it,” Tony said quietly. “Don’t turn into Gibbs. You don’t want to be alone in thirty years, running on anger and coffee. It’s not too late to change how things are for you.”

Jimmy nodded. Thankfully, Tony dropped the subject after that.

Later, they had a video call with Breena’s parents, and also Ducky, and then for the rest of their stay there, Jimmy decided not to worry about work and enjoyed his time off with his wife and daughter, and Tony and Tali. They went to Paris for a couple of days, and Breena got to go to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and it was all fabulous. Time just flew on by, and then they were on a plane, heading back to DC.

“Thanks for this wonderful vacation, Jimmy,” Breena whispered in his ear, watching as Victoria slept in the seat in between them.

“I didn’t do it, Bree,” Jimmy told her again. “It was all Tony’s idea.”

“Well, I thanked him, too,” she smiled. “I had such a good time, and I’m so happy that you got to be there with us for once.”

“Me, too,” Jimmy had to agree.

Breena held her tongue, not wanting to ask him – yet again – to speak to Vance, and Jimmy appreciated it. But he knew what he had to do. He wanted more time like this, to hang out with his family and not just to work himself to death. If Tony could escape Gibbs’ ridiculous way of working everyone to the bone, then Jimmy could, too. Besides, as Tony said, he was the right person for the job and Vance was lucky to have him. It was time he used some of that leverage to get him more time to spend with his family and to get off the train to an early grave caused by stress and overworking.

He went in to speak to Vance before even going down to Autopsy on his first day back from his vacation. They had a long discussion on what Jimmy’s expectations were, and what he needed in order to succeed. They were interviewing assistants for him within the week and a couple of months later, Jimmy was finally able to go home to his wife and child at a reasonable hour most nights and be there for them. He took Victoria to her ballet class and cheered as loudly as he could during her recital. They Skyped with Tony and Tali on an almost weekly basis, keeping in close touch.

It wasn’t that long before Breena pulled a bun out of the E-Z Bake oven and presented it to Jimmy.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Jimmy had to ask.

“Victoria’s going to be a big sister,” Breena’s smile was wide and joyful.

Jimmy couldn’t ask for anything more. This time, he was the one to send Tony a Symbolese message of a stick figure woman, and a bun in the oven.


End file.
